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Forum:Administrators
So what I'm thinking is, a thing that's important for future progress on the wiki, is that the role of the administrator/bureaucrat needs to be clarified somewhat. We have this, which is hardly ever adhered to. It should come as no surprise to anyone that administrators have come to be seen as "leaders" of some sort, while the policy there obviously dictates otherwise; I argue this is not entirely their fault, as most were never asked to be the arbiter of people's disputes. While having become an admin is in most cases a relatively dependable indicator of one's savvy when it comes to content and similar matters, other situations... not so much. I think this should be adhered to a much stronger degree than before, enforced by other administrators if possible. Of particular importance is a blocking "ranking" system of sorts; what sort of infractions warrant this and that timeframe of blocking? It's important to keep this as separate from personal opinions regarding block length, which diverge MASSIVELY as one certain recent event will tell you, as possible. I'm thinking contacting administrators for their professional contributory skills should be limited strictly to things requiring action when debate has already been completed... if their input is otherwise needed, they should expect to be answered by just another contributor with no more authority over the matter than they have. It's important to stress this as new arrivals (and even some seasoned contributors) seem to view us as "bosses" with some sort of power. Basically, I'm suggesting more power be transferred to the community as a whole, not resting in the hands of a small number of people. Discuss. --AuronKaizer ' 10:41, September 11, 2011 (UTC) :A ranking system for blocks sounds like a great idea. Since this forum will be about the importance of admins however a separate forum for that would probably work best since it would require a lot of discussion and votes not entirely related to this subject. Oni Link 10:50, September 11, 2011 (UTC) :I am in agreement with Oni that a ranking system for blocks would be beneficial. By having it, any admin would have something to fall back on to justify the means of any block. In addition, consistency for extended blocks would be nice. In terms of the roll of administrators, while there might need to be some reform to the guidelines, I don't see any major problems currently with the system. I don't believe that any current admins are going out and setting policy without any community discussion on the issue. There is never going to be a unanimous decisions from the community so admins do have to make judgement calls every once in a while. Since can lead to the abuse of their privileges, a system where other administrators keep each other in check could serve a purpose. While I believe that giving more power to the community is not a bad idea, at the same time people are idiots (myself included) and that is why admins exist in the first place. Sure the Administrators page says "being an administrator is no big deal" and this may be true. But there is a reason admins exist and when the situation arises they have to move beyond being a normal user and use those "few extra buttons" how they see fit. I personally feel that it should be up to other administrators to determine if an admin is abusing their privileges and not the community's as I personally believe that the masses are not capable of making rational decisions. So in summary, an admin should be a normal user until their extra privileges are needed, at which point it is the role of other admins to assure that actions taken are rational. --Birdman5589 (talk) 17:00, September 11, 2011 (UTC) I'm in agreement with Birdie here. A ranking system for blocking sounds like a great idea; we should definitely get to work on making one of those sometimes. I also don't think there are that many problems with the way we currently handle things; though giving power to the community is, of course, not in any way a bad idea. I do think that because of the level of indecision we have in our community, however, the administrators being there to make judgement calls is a good thing. And to quote Birdie, ''"I personally feel that it should be up to other administrators to determine if an admin is abusing their privileges and not the community's ..." I think that as he said, admins should keep other admins in check; we could, of course, have "administrator discussions" every now and then and whatnot to see if a certain one of us is abusing his (or her, I suppose) power. I do think that it's unnecessary to see us as "bosses" or "leaders", but it is of course good to note that we're more experienced contributors (in some cases) so that the newbies can let us know if they need anything or have any questions (though, of course, the rollbackers and most of our active contributors [of course, most of our active contributors are rollbackers] are also very wiki-savvy and can help out with the newblets). On the subject of the community, I believe that while as a whole we're a bunch of great and generally intelligent people, we are ''very'' indecisive people, which is again why I think our current system works. Having that higher group of people is a good thing in many cases as they can be the deciding powers in such frequent cases of indecision if it comes to the point where nothing is happening, though using polls should eliminate some of the need for this. Again, back to the subject of blocking, a ranking system for blocks is definitely a good idea. In my opinion, we should make a Zeldapedia namespace page called Blocking Policy or something like that that lists the "ranks" of possible evils and vandalization and what their according block lengths are. I think we have a good amount of established rules at some point, but a lot of times we'll kind of just randomly block people infinitely or for a long time (And I'm not just referring to the recent events here-- I myself have done this numerous times). I think it's just the general assumption that IPs will never come back anyway, which, while true, can be a mistake; the IP could come back and learn the ropes and be a good contributor. On hat note, we should also definitely sue some sort of "three strike" system or something, where two blocks it goes to infinity. But this whole blocking policy can be discussed in another form if we decide we want to do this. -'''Minish Link 17:34, September 11, 2011 (UTC) :As an edit, I'd also like to clarify that I do believe in most situations administrators should respond to any questions just as any other contributor. It's only the situations in which their editing expertise, extra buttons, administrative abilities, or anything else like that in which they should respond with authority or whatever. This of course goes on to include reprimanding the n00bs for breaking rules and that kind of thing; I do think we have the right to respond authoritatively in those situations. Oh, and sorry for the text wall :P -'Minish Link' 17:41, September 11, 2011 (UTC) I'm just going to keep this short and sweet. A ranking system, as I understand, will work incredibly well. I know that as I started out as admin, very confusing on which acts get what kind of boot, per say. So yes, a ranking system not only helps confusion around certain topics, but can also help new admins as they join the team. For admins in the community, a certain level of authority is needed in situations and while I've always tried to think of admins as users with extra buttons, in certain cases, we just can't have that. I've probably missed or misread something here, but text walls confuse me sometimes (and this is one of those times), so yeah... - McGillivray227 18:23, September 11, 2011 (UTC) :A system for block lengths sounds like a great idea. I support the idea of keeping things more in the hands of the whole community, and not treating admins too differently except in cases where admin powers need to be used. That's not to say that a user's/admin's experience doesn't count for anything, any experienced user should of course be viewed as such. It's just that admin status itself doesn't need to be stressed when it comes to discussion and such like. Admins of course need to step in and use their powers in certain cases where there is an issue, but at other times I don't think it helps to view admins as a separate tier of user for having admin status; their experience will speak for itself when it comes to discussion. I do think things are running pretty well overall now though.--[[User:Fierce Deku|'Fierce']][[User talk:Fierce Deku|'Deku']] 20:12, September 11, 2011 (UTC) :A blocking reference thingy sounds good to me. And I feel they should only emphasis the fact that they're admins when it is completely necessary, otherwise it could get to the point where people are just "he's an admin, don't irritate him". Apologies for such a short post here, but what I was going to say has been said and there's no point repeating it. – ''Jäzz '' 21:14, September 11, 2011 (UTC)